1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of computer processing and, more particularly, to restoring database backup copies.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computer memory storage and data bandwidth increase, so does the amount and complexity of data that business and industry manage each day. A large portion of the data that may be managed in an enterprise involves content managed for a company or workgroup by a dedicated server, such as an enterprise information portal, which provides employees and customers the ability to search and access corporate information. Such information may include electronic documents, announcements, task, discussion topic, etc., that may be organized as lists of items. The enterprise information portal may serve as the gateway to log into the corporate network and retrieve electronic documents. It is noted that enterprise information portals are typically secure and private (also known as intranet portals), but also may include external gateways for wider or even public access.
An enterprise information portal often includes a back-end database system, which may serve as a document management system. The back-end database system may store data in the form of records comprising links to electronic documents, metadata, and/or other content associated with the portal, such as web pages. The back-end database in an enterprise information portal may in some cases be a variant of a stand-alone database system, which has been configured for document and content management.
Web site development software may support different types of web sites through the use of a template architecture. Therefore, multiple site definitions and templates may be created by application developers and used in a deployment. The web site definitions may consist of multiple tables and records located in a file system of a front-end web server. These tables and records define the various aspects of a web site and sub sites. One or more users may provide further changes to a deployed site definition in the file system by adding, deleting, and modifying information stored in these tables and records. Such customizations may provide a preferred look and feel for one or more web pages of the web site.
The tables and records used to define web pages may include linked lists utilizing numerical identifier values. Software within the intranet portal may generate a GUID (globally unique identifier) to be used to reference records and lists of items and to be used within linked lists. Following a database backup, a user may choose to restore a web site. The intranet portal application may receive the restored data and build, rather than restore, the web site according to a predetermined definition or format provided by a template architecture. In addition, the building process may include generating new GUID values. Because data may be rebuilt according to a predetermined format, customizations included in the backed up data of the web site may be lost in the rebuilt web site. For example, added records and lists of items might lose connections within linked lists due to the fact that the additions are not described in a template used for rebuilding the data. Similarly, corresponding links may be broken when new GUID values are generated as part of the restoration. Additionally, the navigation structure between pages may be lost resulting in broken web links in the restored web pages. Consequently, the look, feel, and content of the restored web pages may not be the same as the web pages, which were backed up.
In view of the above, improved systems and methods for restoration of backed up database data are desired.